


We Are Tethered (To The Story We Must Tell)

by losingmymindtonight



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies), Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (but only for a little bit), (you'll see), Alternate Reality, Be Careful What You Wish For, Burns, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Coma, Dreams and Nightmares, Dubious Science, Fix-It, Gen, Hospitals, Magic and Science, Nightmares, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, POV Peter Parker, Peter Parker Needs a Hug, Soul Stone (Marvel), Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Lives, Wishes, that last tag is @ Peter in this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-27
Updated: 2019-09-27
Packaged: 2020-10-29 13:43:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20797559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/losingmymindtonight/pseuds/losingmymindtonight
Summary: Tony’s heart monitor made Peter feel sick.It shouldn’t. It was good. It wasmiraclegood, even, because a heart monitor meant that there was a heartbeat. A heartbeat meant that Tony was alive. Tony being alive meant that Tony wasn’t dead.(Tony should be dead. With everything they knew about the Stones, Tony should bedead.)--After Endgame, Peter doesn't know what to feel, but he does know what he wants.Or, at least, he thinks he does.





	We Are Tethered (To The Story We Must Tell)

**Author's Note:**

> This was started as a reaction to the news of Peter leaving the MCU. There was a bunch of posts on Tumblr joking about how Sony would play off Peter not knowing about any of the events of the MCU, and while most of them were light-hearted, I decided, as usual, to look at the Angst Potential. After hearing that we're gonna get a Spider-Man 3 in the MCU today, I decided to come back and finish this monster, because Peter Parker is Home.  
This is a play on the classic "character wishes for something and gets shoved into an alternate reality to show them how their wish is actually an awful idea" trope. The specifics are a little handwavey, but I hope you'll forgive that and just Enjoy The Suffering.  
As always, thank you for reading the random bullshit I write in dining halls and at hours when I should be studying/sleeping. I genuinely love these two, and it's nice that people are still interested in reading the stories I create with them, even after everything. I love y'all.
> 
> WARNINGS: hospital scenes, descriptions of burns (non-graphic), subtle themes of death (maybe? no one dies), vaguely non-consensual drugging (listen it's for Peter's own good), nightmares, comas

Tony’s heart monitor made Peter feel sick.

It shouldn’t. It was _ good _ . It was _ miracle _good, even, because a heart monitor meant that there was a heartbeat. A heartbeat meant that Tony was alive. Tony being alive meant that Tony wasn’t dead.

(Tony should be dead. With everything they knew about the Stones, Tony should be _ dead _.)

But, god, it made him feel _ so sick. _

The drone, the never-varying pitch, the way it made his mentor feel more machine than man. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t _ stand it _. The world had upended itself in a second. That’s all it took to have your life flipped and lurched into something unrecognizable. Just a second.

All it took was a snap.

(Two snaps. _ Two _ snaps. Thanos had snapped, and that was enough, that was _ too much _ , but then Peter had thought it was over, had thought they’d end the nightmare together, side by side, the way heroes always did in movies, but then Tony had melded the Stones into his armor and they had pierced right through him, had made his skin blister and his eyes burn and then he’d collapsed, overburdened by the _ scream _of a universe realigning even as Peter’s universe broke apart.)

Everything felt surreal, now. Days and nights had blurred together. The more he pondered it, the more he realized that he didn’t know what day it was, what month. He didn’t even know the year.

They’d lost. He’d died. He’d come back. Then, Tony had held the Stones and he’d been hollowed out, destroyed by them. That was how Peter measured time now: by the spaces between consecutive tragedies, and by how many times Tony’s heart monitor pierced the room per minute.

He just wanted it to be over. He was so suspended in the pain, the confusion, the grief. He’d do anything for an ending. Just... he’d do _ anything _.

The door hissed open. He could hear murmurs outside, voices he knew. Pepper, Happy, May. All hushed down in premature funeral tones.

He wondered who they thought they were burying: Tony, or Peter, or both.

The door shut. High heels clicked towards him, so he knew it was Pepper. May never really wore heels. They hurt her feet.

Her hand ghosted over his back, warning him she was there even though they both knew it was unnecessary.

He counted five of Tony’s heartbeats before she finally spoke, low and concerned. “You need to sleep, sweetheart.”

“I can’t,” he whispered.

Pepper sighed, and Peter hated that he was stressing her. She didn’t need that. She already had Tony to worry about, had their child. Their daughter. Tony’s _ daughter _ . What was Peter Parker to Morgan Stark? He was a nobody, the son of a couple of long-dead scientists, and she was a _ Stark _. She had Tony Stark’s DNA.

He couldn’t help but feel the displacement. And, no, he’d never thought of himself as Tony’s son. That just wasn’t the right word for it. But… But he did feel a little like his kid, sometimes. _ His _kid. The kid that Tony Stark chose. The one kid he cared about above all others.

It was nice to be cherished like that. To be put first. Tony used to look at him in a reverent sort of way, like he’d never seen anything like him before, and Peter had treasured those moments. But now Morgan was here. Morgan, his flesh and blood child. His real child. Not a stand-in.

Tony would never look at him like he was unique again.

Nausea rushed up his throat. Oh, god. Tony may never look at him again _ at all _. The heart monitor made him want to sob with every beep, but Peter didn’t know what he would do it if stopped.

It had… It had been a long few days. He’d had to live five years between the hours.

“I can get Bruce to give you something,” Pepper offered, and Peter had forgotten she was there, somehow.

“No,” he said, a little too quickly, a little too desperate. “No. I... I can’t sleep.”

Her hand brushed through his hair. She’d always been kind, but she was so _ motherly _ now. At least, Peter assumed that was the right adjective.

There was never a better time to remember that his own mother was long dead.

“Why not?”

“I’m just... I’m scared he’ll disappear,” he choked out.

“Oh, honey.” Pepper squeezed his shoulder. “He won’t.”

He felt a little hysterical. High, maybe, although he’d never actually been high before, so maybe it wasn’t like that at all. He’d heard people describe being high as euphoric, and whatever this was... well, it sure as hell wasn’t euphoria.

He twisted in his seat to face her. It was the first time he’d let himself look away from Tony’s hospital bed in a long, long time. His head spun a little as he shifted, neck and shoulders burning against the change. “You say that like people _ don’t _ disappear.”

Pepper flinched at the reference. The memory. “They don’t disappear _ anymore _, honey.”

_ You can’t know that, _ he thought, _ people never disappeared before but then they did. _

“I... I don’t mean to be difficult,” he said, slow and bitter but honest, too, a kind of torn-open honest, “but I’m not sure I’m gonna believe much of anything anyone says from now on.”

_ You’re alright, _ Tony had said. _ You’re alright. _

Peter had believed him, but he’d lied. He’d _ lied _ . Peter _ hadn’t _ been alright. He’d died. And then he’d come back, and he’d clutched _ alright _ in his hands like Tony had clutched him against his chest on the battlefield, but then the world had torn that _ alright _away, too. Had melted it down like skin dipped in lava.

“I am so, so sorry, Peter,” Pepper whispered, voice hitching.

_ I’m sorry, _ Peter had whispered, just when he realized that he was tipping over an edge, falling towards a darkness that he’d thought was years and miles off, _ I’m sorry. _

He hadn’t lied. He really _ was _sorry.

“I wish I wasn’t Spider-Man,” he said suddenly, fists clenching. This was the thought that had been carving him up for days. The thought that shouldn’t be but the thought that _ was _, anyway, regardless of what was right and what was fair. “I wish he wasn’t Iron Man. I wish this wasn’t real.”

Pepper’s hand tensed on his back. “You don’t mean that.”

He scrunched up his face, squinted back tears. Tears for Tony, tears for himself. “No, no,” he rasped. “I mean it. I mean it. I... I wish I could wake up and all of this was just a stupid dream.”

_ A dream I didn’t have to remember ever again. _

Pepper’s voice was strained. He was pushing her, he guessed. Poking and prodding and pushing, seeing how far he could lean before somebody snatched him back. 

“Shh, shh. You’re just tired, honey, you’re not thinking straight. You’ve been here all night. Just... let me get Bruce, okay? Tony wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself. Let us help you.”

He was too drained to reel against it. He knew his defeat was inevitable, anyway. Adults really didn’t care what children wanted, when it came down to it, and he’d never heard of Pepper Potts losing an argument.

He just nodded, slow, dejected, unsteady. Pepper typed something into her phone before he’d even finished the gesture, lips pressed tightly together. It must’ve only been a minute after that that Bruce came in, and that just confirmed Peter’s suspicion that they’d planned this. Pepper’s visit hadn’t been a visit at all: it had been an ambush.

It was such a Tony thing to do that he nearly cried.

Bruce pressed a couple pills into his palm. He thought about fighting, about shoving them back and refusing, but the look on Pepper’s face stopped him.

He took them dry, not even glancing towards the water bottle Bruce held out for him. He didn’t miss the way that both adults seemed to slump with relief once the capsules were down. He supposed it was easier to bear the guilt of watching him crumble if he was unconscious, if they couldn’t see it happening in real time.

He let himself be guided off his chair, away from Tony’s bedside, to the couch in the corner. That made him feel a little better. He’d been worried that they’d take him away, take him somewhere without the nauseating squeal of a mechanical heartbeat.

Pepper sat next to him, at his hip, and his brain dredged up some hazy memory of his mother doing the same, once. The curves of her face were soft in the red-blue glow of his _ Star Wars _ night light, her smile wide and all for him and maybe just a little bit reverent.

She was looking at him like she’d never seen anything like him before.

Then he blinked, and it was just Pepper, and she wasn’t smiling, and she was looking at him like she was _ tired _. Like Peter was a task to deal with. A checkmark on a very, very long list of things to organize.

“Everything’s going to be okay, Peter,” Pepper murmured, rubbing his arm. “Just relax. The medicine should help.”

For some reason, he hadn’t actually considered that giving in and taking the pills was truly a concession. A part of him had just assumed that they’d overlook his metabolism, that he’d burn through them before they could have any real effect, but of course Bruce Banner wouldn’t be fooled by that.

He’d already started to feel a little fuzzy, like his whole body was warmer than it was supposed to be, ten pounds heavier, but he pushed it away. Ignored it. Hoped that the Spider-Man side of him would do something _ useful _for once, instead of being too little, too late.

“Don’t lie,” he whispered, blinking hard. “Please don’t lie to me.”

Pepper just pressed her lips together, and didn’t say anything at all.

The moment he felt the drugs start to pull him down in earnest, he tried to fumble upright, gasping back his panic and reaching (childishly, stupidly, _ senselessly _) for Tony.

It was ridiculous. It was immature. What was he hoping to achieve? Tony couldn’t save him, _ wouldn’t _ save him, even if he _ was _ awake. Even if he _ wasn’t _trapped in a coma that no one, not even Strange, one of the most renowned neurosurgeons in history, seemed to understand.

But still, he wanted him. He wanted someone who looked at him like he was something precious and not something broken, exhausting, _ pitiful _.

He felt the tears on his cheeks before he realized that he’d shattered. That he was finally, _ finally _crying. All those heartbreaks, all those aftermaths, and this was the first time he’d actually cried.

It was monumental. Monumental and awful and cathartic, but it also wasn’t _ real _. He was only crying because of whatever Bruce had given him, and he had just enough coherency left to be pissed about it. To feel the rawness of being unzipped and upended without an ounce of control.

If Peter hadn’t been so disoriented, he probably would’ve felt guilty for how his desperation made Pepper’s face splinter, although he also guessed that what he did next was even worse.

“Mis’er Stark,” he gagged, and he hated himself as soon as the plea left his mouth. “Mis’er S’ark. _ Please _.”

The Compound’s ruins spread out around him. _ Mister Stark? Can you hear me? It’s Peter. _

_ Sir, please. _

“Shh, Peter, it’s alright,” Pepper whispered, the comfort flat, like it was forced out through clenched teeth. She pressed him back back down to the couch, cushioning his head so he wouldn’t smack it on anything as he struggled. “He’s not going anywhere, honey, and you’ll feel better when you wake up.”

He didn’t think he would, thought that her words were just another lie told by adults thinking they knew best, but the drugs didn’t give him much of a choice outside of following orders.

He kept crying for Tony until he couldn’t.

\--

_ I don’t wanna go. Sir, please. I don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna- _

\--

It didn’t feel like he was dreaming.

His eyes were closed, far too heavy to open, but he could see a burning glow of orange through the lids. The last thing he remembered was being pinned to a couch in Tony’s hospital room, but this didn’t feel like a couch and it didn’t really feel like a hospital room, either. It felt like… suspension. Like being held by something without being touched.

He couldn’t hear Tony’s heartbeat anymore.

He wondered if this was a byproduct of whatever drugs Bruce had given him. They must’ve been strong, to have put him out so quickly, especially while he was fighting it.

_ “What do you want?” _

Somehow, he’d known there would be speech before it came. It didn’t startle him. He just sank into it, comfortable and content.

It sounded a little like his Uncle Ben.

_ I don’t know, _ he thought back, because he had a mouth but he really wasn’t sure if he could use it.

_ “Yes, you do.” _

Did he? Well, yes, he did. He’d said it to Pepper, earlier. He’d been saying to himself ever since the battlefield. Ever since Tony’s eyes had stared right at and through him.

Tony was supposed to look at him like he’d never seen anything like him before. Like he was something precious. He wasn’t supposed to look at him like he wasn’t even there.

_ I wish that none of this was real. I wish I wasn’t Spider-Man. I wish aliens were just stupid jokes in Star Wars. I wish the Avengers had never existed at all. _

_ I wish I could forget the way that Tony looks at me. I wish I could forget everything about him. If I can’t remember it, it can’t hurt. _

_ Please. I just wish that none of this was real. _

There was a pause, but Peter didn’t really feel any suspense. He knew, somewhere deep down, that the voice had asked because the voice cared. They’d asked so that they could give him that he wanted. Then,

_ “I am very sorry for your loss, child.” _

The orange faded.

\--

The orange faded, and so did Peter. At least, so did pieces of him. He grasped at a couple, felt sharp stings of grief as memories flaked away, but then they were gone and it was quiet and there was nothing left to miss.

\--

He woke up in his bedroom, in Queens.

For a weird, bobbling second, he didn’t understand why he was there. It felt… out of place, somehow. Like someone had shifted his entire life just half an inch to the left.

But then it slipped away, and he wondered why he’d ever felt so wigged out at all. Where else would he wake up? He hadn’t slept anywhere outside of this apartment in years. Even when he and Ned had sleepovers, his best friend always came over to his and May’s place.

This was home. He was home.

He sat up, stretched. Blinked around the room for a solid minute, wondering why everything was so blurry until he remembered his glasses, sitting glaring and obvious on his bedside table.

He put them on. They hurt the bridge of his nose.

There was a knock on his door, then the familiar sound of May’s voice through wood. “Peter, honey? You awake?”

“Yeah,” he called back.

“Alright, well, you need to be up soon. You’ve got 20 minutes if you want to catch the subway.”

“Catch the subway for what?”

Her laugh was loud, even though it was muffled by the door. “For _ school _ , Peter. You _ sure _you’re awake?”

“Uh, yeah.” He shook his head, hoping that maybe he could knock his thoughts back together. What was _ wrong _with him today? “Yeah, right. Sorry. I’m having kind of a weird morning.”

“Clearly,” she said, amused. “Breakfast’s ready, so hurry up.”

There were jeans slung over the back of his desk chair, so he pulled them on. He grabbed a plain gray t-shirt from his dresser, left it untucked. His toothpaste tasted the same as it always had. When he walked into the kitchen, May had burned the bacon. And the eggs. And the toast.

It was familiar, routine. He just couldn’t figure out why it didn’t feel _ right _.

He shook the sensation away. It was irrational, ridiculous. He’d just slept weird, or something. Had a bad dream. That was all. It happened, sometimes. After all, what else could it be?

Peter Parker’s life was just about as boring as a life could get.

\--

“Ned,” he asked in Chemistry, breath hushed so that their teacher wouldn’t hear, “do you… feel like something’s off, today?”

Ned looked at him like he’d grown a second head.

“What’re you talking about, man?”

“I dunno. Just, like, don’t you feel like something’s missing?”

Ned stared at him for a second.

“Did you forget to do your homework?”

“No, Ned,” he griped, rolling his eyes. “I mean, don’t you feel like you’re missing something _ big _?”

“Uh, no.” Ned tilted his head to the side, studying him. “Hey, do you feel okay?”

God, he had to shake this. It was bizarre, anyway, and now Ned definitely thought that he’d lost his mind.

He gave his best friend a weak smile, making himself focusing on the equations on the board rather than the unfinished puzzle in his head.

“I’m fine,” he said. “Sorry. I know that probably sounded like the beginning of a bad sci-fi movie, or something.”

“It’s cool.” Ned shrugged. “I actually would’ve been pretty down with being transported into a bad sci-fi movie right about now. We’ve got P.E. next period.”

“Yeah,” he laughed, something hard settling in his stomach. “Yeah. Uh, screw P.E., dude.”

_ This isn’t right. This isn’t right. This isn’t right. _

\--

He spent the whole day rubbing at his wrists.

They felt bare.

\--

May told him to invite Ned over for the weekend. Her mouth had tipped downward when she’d said it, so he guessed it was probably her thinly-veiled attempt at cheering him up.

It worked until they started talking about Game of Thrones.

They were sitting on the floor, backs pressed up against his bed. A half-finished Lego set took up the rest of the carpet. They had to be careful when they extended their legs, or they risked knocking the pieces around.

“I guess I’ve gotta be a Stark,” Ned said. “Just cause Ned Stark is the only other character I’ve ever heard of with my name, y’know?”

Peter choked, airways closing, and he kicked out without even meaning to, sending one of his and Ned’s carefully-crafted piles of Legos skittering under his dresser. There were flashes in front of his eyes, flashes of color and lights and _ feelings _, feelings like spandex sliding over his chest and smooth calluses against his face and his DNA snapping apart underneath his skin. Feelings like fear and love and desolation and grief.

Oh, god, the _ grief _. It stabbed through him, directionless and vicious, the kind of all-consuming that Peter hadn’t thought existed. It tasted like blood, like burned hair and wax-melting fingernails. 

He’d seen horrible things. Horrible, horrible things. They were there now, too, lurking just underneath his eyelids. A puppet show playing on a distant horizon.

“Peter?” Ned said, muted and far, far away. Even farther than the memories, maybe. Peter was somewhere removed from it all. Somewhere where the sky burned orange. “Peter, are you okay?”

A battlefield. An army. Dozens of portals, sizzling bright in the ash-induced night. Weapons squealing. Creatures gurgling in death throes. A metal breastplate, shredded beyond repair.

“I’m gonna get May.”

Six stones, scattered and concealed. Six stones, glowing in a gauntlet. Six stones, rending fire up a man’s arm, making a shell out of a father.

“Peter, sweetheart? Can you hear me?”

Six stones. Six stones. Six stones.

Time, Space, Power, Reality, Mind, Soul.

Six stones. Six stones. _ Six Stones. _

“Peter, please.”

The universe was colossal. So colossal that you could fit it in the palm of your hand, and then it would kill you. It would leave you hollowed and husked.

“Peter, honey, it’s not real.”

But it was. It _ was _. For a split second of certainty, Peter knew that it was the only real thing he’d touched in a long, long time.

\--

May sent Ned home after the panic attack. Then she tucked him into bed, pressing the age-worn teddy bear he’d had since he was born into his chest, and fussed over whether or not she should take him to the doctor.

He told her that he was fine, which was a lie.

She asked if he knew what had started it.

He told her that he didn’t remember, which was true.

\--

There was red. Red dirt, red sky, red blood. Red fear. His hands were bright, metallic, dust and ash. There was a man, his face just always out of reach, on the tip of his tongue, but he couldn’t touch it, say it, materialize it.

But his arms. He felt his arms. Being held, being cradled. And then falling. Falling. Falling.

“I don’t wanna go.”

The ground melted through him, the arms disappeared. He was alone. Alone, alone, alone. He was in an elephant graveyard, the twisted building-bones reaching out for him. And the man was here, too, but he wasn’t there. His face wasn’t there. Peter was kneeling in front of him but he wasn’t there.

He couldn’t see his face but he could see his eyes.

He’d never forget his eyes.

They were looking at him wrong. He didn’t know what looking at him _ right _ meant, but he knew that this was _ wrong _. He knew that it was so, so wrong.

“Mister Stark?” There was dirt in his throat. Why was there dirt in his throat? “Can you hear me? It's Peter.”

_ Mister Stark. Mister Stark. Mister Stark. _

“We won, Mister Stark. We won.”

He felt small, and he wanted the man to do something about it but he didn’t. He _ didn’t _.

Instead, the man died, and Peter wept.

\--

He woke up. Gasped. Choked down tears and-

“Mister Stark,” he sobbed, hands clenching. “Mister _ Stark _.”

He froze. The words had unfurled from his mouth without thought. He hadn’t even realized that he’d done it, and he couldn’t figure out why.

He didn’t know a Mister Stark. He didn’t. The name... the name shouldn’t mean anything to him, except that it did. It did.

He didn’t know a Mister Stark, but he loved him.

He loved him.

How could he love someone that he didn’t even know?

\--

The gaps just kept getting wider.

He’d had to stuff his NASA shirt under his bed, because the thought of space made his vision black out. Ned had mentioned the Mothman episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved and it’d taken him two hours to get his heart rate back under control. His English teacher had handed out a creative writing assignment that prompted them to write about what life would be like if they could fly, and it took Peter a solid minute to remember that people _ couldn’t _. 

Audis made ghosts flutter in his stomach. He kept forgetting to put his glasses on in the morning. The AT-AT’s in _ The Empire Strikes Back _ reminded him of airplanes.

He’d wanted to be an astronaut since he was four. He and Ned watched every single Buzzfeed Unsolved as soon as they came out. He _ knew _ that people couldn’t fly, and he’d never touched an Audi. He’d worn glasses his whole life. He… He’d never even _ been _on an airplane.

_ What is happening to me? _He asked himself, staring at his red-and-blue hoodie and wondering why whenever he looked at it, he could only smell smoke.

\--

The taste of inedible soup. The background clatter of a workshop, machines whirring and clumsy bots skittering into walls. Work-hardened hands clasping over his own, warm and soft and kind.

Floor-to-ceiling-length windows. A Jack-and-the-Beanstalk penthouse, teetering over a city abuzz with light. Terrible horror movies on an over-large TV, the burning warmth of a heavy arm resting across his shoulders.

An October-cooled roof. A finger tilting his chin skyward, night awash with smog and light pollution. A voice murmuring, _ look up there, Pete, look as far as you can see and decide to reach farther. _

_ These are memories, _ he realized, his heart in his throat. _ These are memories, and this is Mister Stark. _

Safety and hero and _ kid _ . T-shirts under blazers. Jeans that Peter could never afford. A rooftop adrenaline-rush. A dream-shattering snarl: _ if you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it. _

Airplanes. Tarmac. The taste of metal on his tongue. The whine of a suit that shouldn’t be able to fly. Looking up at a legend and seeing a man.

Eyes looking at him like he was everything. Hands cradling his face like they were cradling the world.

Mister Stark. Mister Stark. The man Peter loved without understanding. The chink in his bliss. The centerpiece of the mosaic, sitting stark and empty in the square.

The world wasn’t missing a _ something _ . It was missing a _ him _.

\--

Peter woke up, and the memories were gone.

The glow of _ Iamloved _ stayed.

\--

He was stumbling over his feet, shoving textbooks and notebooks into his backpack even as he yanked on a pair of already-worn jeans. He’d slept well, _ really _well, for once, but that meant that he’d dozed right through his alarm, and now he had to be out the door in five minutes if he wanted to catch the right train.

“May!” He flipped through the sweatshirts hanging in his closet, shaking his head. “May, have you seen my sweatshirt?”

His door cracked open, and May’s head popped through. “Which one?”

“The MIT one.”

Her forehead wrinkled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, honey.”

“My MIT sweatshirt,” he said, blinking at her. “You know, the one that-”

He felt like he’d smacked into a wall. Everything pulled to a halt, but the thought kept going. Going, going…

May just stared at him. “That one that what?”

He’d seen something in his head. He’d seen it so clearly. But now… now he couldn’t even remember what it was that he’d seen. It was like someone had taken white-out to his memories, smudged him and smeared him until he was only half a person.

“I… I don’t know,” he whispered, to May and to the world and to himself.

\--

The Decathlon team was arguing about something. He wasn’t really paying attention. Instead, he was daydreaming about wind rushing past his face, a stomach swoop of adrenaline as he fell and fell and…

“What about you, Peter?” Liz asked, poking his arm. “Best subway station in New York. Go.”

“I prefer the city from above,” he said, mouth moving before his brain even processed the conversation.

“Above?” Flash snorted. “Like one of those helicopter rides? Jesus, Parker, didn’t know that people like you could afford those.”

He traced his knuckles with his eyes, tried to clamp down on the memory that matched the mistake, but it was gone. Gone, gone, gone…

“Whatever, Flash,” he muttered.

_ Why did I say that? _

\--

When he slept, he dreamed of voices. 

_ “I’m sorry, Mrs. Parker. I really don’t have any answers for you.” _

_ “I-I don’t understand. He didn’t… He didn’t even touch the Stones.” _

_ “We aren’t sure what’s causing-” _

_ “What else would it be? What else could do something like this?” _

_ ... _

_ “Is there any news?” _

_ “No. Strange doesn’t know what’s causing it.” _

_ “And it’s the same thing that Tony…?” _

_ “Yes. It’s… It’s like he’s awake in there, somewhere, but he’s not awake out here. God, that sounds crazy even to me.” _

_ … _

_ “It’ll be alright. Kid’s a fighter.” _

_ “But what if he’s tired of fighting? What if this is just… what if he’s decided that he’s done being brave?” _

_ “He wouldn’t.” _

_ “How do you know that?” _

_ “Because Tony picked him for a reason. He saw a piece of himself in the kid. And if there’s one thing you can say about Tony Stark, it’s that he isn’t a quitter.” _

_ ... _

_ “How’s Tony?” _

_ “The same.” _

_ “Do you think they’re together?” _

_ ”I hope so.” _

\--

The conversations haunted him when he was awake, wisps of vapor in wind. He could remember the way they sounded, the familiarity of the speakers’ tones, but never the words. Never what they said.

\--

_ “Peter, baby, please hear me…” _

\--

In the mornings, he started standing in front of his mirror, staring at the bulky silhouette of his glasses, the way his chest and shoulders never quite filled out his shirt, and wondered why even his body looked incomplete.

\--

May found him sitting on the roof. He felt safe up there, with the city stretched out around him like a Playmobil set, but the reason why had gotten swallowed up by the gaps.

“Honey?” She asked, wrapping her cardigan tighter around her chest. There was an early winter wind out there, biting and sharp. “What are you doing out here?”

“Thinking.”

She sat next to him, wrapped an arm around his shoulders. It was a nice spark of warmth in the frigid air. “Honey,” she murmured, “you’ve been worrying me. You’re so distant, nowadays. It’s like you’re a stranger.”

_ I feel like a stranger, _ he thought. _ I feel like I’m a stranger to myself. This world doesn’t fit right. Maybe it does for someone else, but not for me. I don’t belong here, but how can I not belong somewhere when I’ve lived in that somewhere my entire life? _

“I’m sad,” he said instead. It was simpler. More concise.

“Why?”

“That’s the thing,” he whispered, eyes still fixed on the skyline, wishing he understood why it felt incomplete, “I really don’t know.”

\--

May sent him to a therapist.

Her name was Elizabeth Morgan. One of the gaps swallowed the tail end of her name, too, and it pinched everytime he had to say it out loud.

They spent 50 minutes together twice a week. She always started by asking him how his day was, and if there was anything he wanted to talk about. He always told her that his day had been fine, thank you, and that there was nothing he needed to say.

The problem wasn’t with what was there, what he could say. The problem was with what _ wasn't _there, with the words that lingered on the tip of his tongue.

One day, he finally told her that.

“Sometimes,” Mrs. Morgan said in response, “people’s brains block out things that they don’t want to remember.”

“Like what kind of things?”

“Traumatic things.” She watched him passively, hands clasped in front of her stomach, legs crossed one over the other, last name hanging in the air like the blade of a guillotine. “Is there something you don’t want to think about, Peter?”

He paused. Maybe. _ Maybe, maybe, maybe... _

He’d never thought about it before, but the memories always hurt. Even if they started out warm, they always ended in sharp, stinging loss. Like he’d had something taken away from him. Or… Or like something was _ being _taken away from him. Actively taken.

Trauma. Mrs. Morgan had said _ trauma _. People stopped remembering things when they were too terrible to think about. It made sense. If a file was corrupting your computer, you deleted it. Removed the faulty code. It was like that, except with bad memories and brains. When something happened that you couldn’t understand, you just pushed it away.

But what kind of trauma would Peter Parker, a nobody kid from Queens, need to forget?

\--

That night, there was a new voice in his dreams.

_ “Kid, listen to me,” _ it said, and the cadence made Peter want to weep with relief. _ “I don’t know what bullshit utopia She’s got swirling around in there, but it isn’t real, buddy, you got that? C’mon, kid, I know you’re clever as hell. I know you’ve noticed. There are chinks, right? Little things that don’t make sense? You’ve gotta find them, Pete. You’ve gotta find them and you’ve gotta push until it cracks.” _

\--

Peter woke up determined to do… something. 

He just really wished he could remember what it was.

\--

Peter was walking to the train station.

It was Wednesday, right around rush hour. People darted past him, cars honked. It was New York City at its best and its worst: vibrant and alive, but overcrowded and painfully exposed.

Peter usually kept his eyes on his toes during this walk, focused on getting where he was going rather than taking in the sights, but today, he glanced up. Let his eyes trace over the buildings that sprouted up around him: tall and impersonal, giant metal fingers clawing through asphalt.

But there was something missing. There was always something missing.

_ Where is it? Where is it? _

\--

Peter didn’t go to the train station.

Instead, he let his legs move in the direction of the gap. He clung to the sensation of _ wrongness _, stubborn in the discomfort. He didn’t have to see the missing thing to realize that it was gone. In fact, that wasn’t how you found missing things at all.

He just had to find the negative space.

\--

He walked for so long that his feet went numb.

His phone rang in his pocket. _ May. Ned. May. May. May. Ned. Ned. Unknown Number. May. May. May. _

Eventually, he just turned it off.

He ended up in Midtown Manhattan. He guessed that he must’ve looked like a tourist, toting along a backpack, aimlessly wandering, because people kept shoving pamphlets at him. He shrugged them all off.

He knew this city. He’d lived here his whole life. Or, he’d lived in _ a version _ of this city his whole life, at least. He was starting to think that as much as these streets felt like home, _ seemed _like home, that it was a knock-off. A copy, with just a handful of pixels out of place.

He didn’t know what he’d expected to find, when he finally reached the place he was going. It wasn’t like he’d even known what his destination was. Hell, he hadn’t even known if he’d _ get _ to a destination, had just been following the ghost of something, a whisper in the back of his head saying _ push on the cracks. _

He didn’t know what he’d expected to find, but an empty lot and a wall of glass was on the bottom of that nonexistent list.

Empty lots were rare in New York as a whole, but an empty lot in the hustle-bustle of Midtown Manhattan? That just… Peter couldn’t even fathom it. It didn’t make _ sense _ . Everything in him screamed that there should be a building there, a _ huge _one, a building that rose into the sky and pierced through the clouds, a beacon in the universe.

He glanced around. Not a single person seemed perturbed by the displacement. Nobody even _ glanced _at the lot, at the endless concrete, broken only by grass and flowers pushing up between the seams. Was Peter the only one who could see the error? Was he the only one living with his eyes open?

“Push until it cracks,” he whispered to himself, and he didn’t know where the words came from, but he knew that they felt right. “Push, and it’ll crack.”

It felt wrong, somehow, to step over the threshold of the phantom building. It was as if he was standing in the guts of a place, pushing through spaces that were never meant to be touched. It was perverse, abnormal. The sensation shuddered through him. Goosebumps raced up his back, down his arms.

His head hurt, an all-encompassing kind of ache that he could feel behind his teeth. With each step closer to the wall, the pressure grew.

Something didn’t want him here. He’d found a gap, and the gap wanted him _ out _ . It wanted to swallow and swallow until there was nothing left. Until even the feeling of _ wrongness _was gone, faded, dandelion wishes on a breeze.

Peter could see himself in the glass-built wall, and he stared. Took in his glasses, his over-thin frame. Here he was: a gap in a gap. Two flaws meeting, pressing close.

He tilted his head, and his reflection tilted with him. When he squinted, he could’ve sworn that just behind his own silhouette, he could see a subtle orange glow.

He touched the wall, just slightly. Just the barest brush of skin on glass.

It shattered.

He flinched back, staggered, yanked his hand back to his chest. He felt pressure, and clenched his wrist in his hand, turned his arm over.

There was a piece of glass embedded in his palm, but it didn’t hurt. It didn’t bleed.

He didn’t bleed.

\--

The orange glow spilled out from the shattered wall. When it fell over him, it filled him up like relief.

\--

_ “What do you want?” _The voice asked, and this time, Peter knew. He knew so deeply, so instinctually, that he could feel the decision etch itself into his bones.

_ I want to go home. _

Somehow, he knew that the voice was pleased. He felt it, heard it, tasted it.

_ “You are very loved, Peter Parker. Very missed, and very loved.” _

Peter knew that, too.

\--

He fell back into himself with a gasp.

Machines were squealing. Over the racket, someone was saying his name. Over and over again, like a call. Like a prayer.

“Peter. _ Peter _. Can you hear me, kid? C’mon. You gotta tune in.”

He nodded, frantic and unsteady. The light hurt, the sound hurt. It felt like his brain had turned to knives, bouncing and clattered and grinding grooves into the inside of his skull. It hurt. It hurt. It _ hurt _.

“What’s wrong, kid? C’mon, talk to me.”

“My _ head _,” he whimpered, clawing weakly at his temples, wondering what it would take to pull his brain out through his ear, like the Egyptians used to do with mummies. Or was that the nose?

“Yeah, I know,” the person said, soothing. “Believe me, I know. It’s, uh, your brain’s just recalibrating. Hurts like a bitch, but it’s good. Good to have your brain doing the stuff it’s supposed to be doing, y’know?” 

Peter knew that voice. He knew that man. He knew him. He knew him. Finally, finally, _ finally _ . He _ knew him. _

How could he have ever forgotten?

“Mister Stark?”

“Right here, Spider-guy.” Tony huffed out a weak laugh, as if any part of this was funny. “Just… Just try to relax.”

A new hand touched his shoulder. Peter hadn’t even realized there were other people in the room with them. Of course, he also hadn’t worked up the courage to actually open his eyes yet, which was probably a step that came before processing that kind of stuff.

“I’m gonna give him something for the pain,” the new voice said.

“Yeah, that’s good.” Tony sounded more scattered than Peter had ever heard him. “That’s… yes, let’s do that. That’s, uh, that’s a good plan. Definitely an investment in… in my sanity.”

“Mister _ Stark _ ,” he sobbed, and he knew he wanted something but he wasn’t entirely sure what. He just knew that every inch of him was shaking. Trembling against the pain and the overwhelming sensation that he had done something wrong. That he had done something so, _ so _wrong. 

“Hey, easy. You’ve got this, kid.” Tony gripped his chin, firm but not cruel (never cruel, _ never _ cruel). “Open your eyes. Look at me. You’ve had worse, yeah? You’re alright.”

_ I’m not. I’m not. I’m not. _

He gagged, nausea hitting him so suddenly that he didn’t even realize it was coming until it had already arrived. The first heave didn’t bring anything up, and by the time the second one came, Tony had him curled over on his side, a bedpan tucked under his chin.

“It’s okay, Pete.” Tony’s words ran together now, frantic, offbeat, like he was desperate to reassure but lost in the specifics of _how_.“It’s… Kid, listen. You’re working yourself up. You’ve gotta… You’ve gotta try to breathe.”

“_ Tony _.”

Tony’s breath hitched so suddenly, so harshly, that Peter could hear it through the ringing in his ears and the little sobs still crawling their way up his throat. He wondered if it was the fact he’d used his name, or the way he’d said it: desperate, pleading, in the exact same way a little kid might wail for their father.

“Shh,” Tony said, and Peter didn’t need to have his eyes open to sense his entire presence soften. It was as if Peter had just flipped some invisible switch, and the narrative distance between them had crumbled. Tony was right there, now. His tone changed, too, falling into something warm and soothing. Parental. “Hey, shh. I know it hurts, but it’s gonna stop, okay? Just a second.” He cupped the side of Peter’s face. “Just look at me, and breathe through it.”

He blinked his eyes open. The lights of the room certainly didn’t soothe his headache, but _ seeing _Tony, actually seeing him, alive and awake, soothed something else. Some wound inside of him that he couldn’t quite place.

Tony smiled at him, eyes crinkling at the corners. “There we go. Welcome back, kid.”

He shook his head, wondered if his brain was actually rattling around the inside of his skull or if that was just the sensation of his memories reordering. It felt like he’d been scattered, two different realities stuffed in his head. And it _ hurt _.

“Where… Where’d I go?”

Tony’s mouth quirked up at the corner. “You tell me, bud.” He glanced off to the side. Peter weakly tried to follow his gaze, but the hand on his chin stopped him. When Tony looked back, he seemed relieved. “But later, yeah? Not… Not right now.”

Cool washed up his arm, and Peter figured out pretty quickly why Tony hadn’t let him look. It only took a few seconds for his vision to fuzz around the edges, but this time, he wasn’t upset. Wasn’t pissed. Didn’t feel any need to cry or fight.

Plus, his brain finally stopped fragmenting behind his eyes, agony dulling underneath the pain meds, and at that point, that was all he needed. Tony, and a little physical relief.

Bruce could drug him all he wanted, now. Tony was here. Tony was alive. He was more than a heart monitor, more than a still, corpse-like figure in a bed. He was staring down at Peter with love in his eyes, looking at him… looking at him in a way that Peter had never seen before.

Sleep was snatching him up too quickly to ponder exactly what the expression was, and he didn’t have the strength to fight it. Not this time, at least.

“T’ny,” he slurred, smiling up at the blurry image of the man’s face as the world spun off.

“I’m right here, Pete,” he murmured, still using that gentle, brand-new tone of voice. “Right here. You’re home, now. Just rest.”

A hand brushed through his hair as his eyes slid shut again, slow and soothing, an unspoken lullaby.

Peter just couldn’t help but notice that it was shaking.

\--

Three days after Peter woke up, Tony showed up in his doorway and took him to the roof.

Neither of them were supposed to be there. Tony had already broken just about every single one of Cho and Bruce’s recovery rules. Apparently, he was meant to be on bed rest when Peter first woke up, an order that he had quite obviously ignored. They’d tolerated that, but only on the condition that he didn’t go _ anywhere else _ unsupervised yet. Plus, Peter was still supposed to be under observation, until his headaches stopped popping up so often.

But, as Tony put it, they were _ doers _, and Peter had started to feel the restlessness down to his core by the time they’d made their mini-escape.

The sun was setting. They sat near but not on the edge. Tony’s right arm was bundled up in a sling, but they’d taken the bandages off the side of his face, and the damage wasn’t as severe as Peter remembered it being. Now, it actually looked like a face. _ Before… _

He shook the thought away.

“Cho’s Regeneration Cradle is really something,” Tony said, when he mentioned it. “They’ve stuffed me in about half a dozen times by now.” He gestured at his swaddled arm. “Don’t know how much good it’ll do this damn thing, though.”

“Doctor Banner said that it’s bad,” Peter whispered.

Tony hummed. “He’s not wrong. We’re giving it a try with the Cradle, but it’ll probably have to be amputated at some point.”

“They can’t do anything?”

To his surprise, Tony reached out and brushed some hair out of his face, expression soft. “There just isn’t anything left to salvage, bud. Cho’s trying, but it’s been a dead end so far.”

Peter had noticed that Tony was much better about presenting harsh truths gently, now. He was better at a lot of things, actually. He didn’t navigate every interaction with Peter like it was a maze anymore. He was deliberate, but in a natural, instinctive way. There were even moments when he was a little bit _ too _gentle with Peter, like he’d forgotten that he was sixteen, not six.

But right now, even Peter could understand those moments of confusion, because he felt much, _ much _younger than sixteen.

“Does it hurt?”

Tony shook his head, a wry smile on his face. “Fun part of severe nerve damage is that it doesn’t really hurt. It’s just numb, mostly.”

“Oh. That’s… That’s good, I guess. I mean, it’s _ not _ good. It’s not, uh, it’s _ bad _, really, but it’s good that you’re not-”

“Easy, Pete,” Tony said, reaching out with his good arm, squeezing Peter’s elbow until he went quiet. “I know what you mean. Relax.”

He nodded, short and sharp. He still felt… strange. Disconnected. Bruce assured him that it wouldn’t last, was just a side effect of… whatever had happened to him. As Doctor Strange put it, his consciousness had been straddling two separate realities. That kind of paradox took time to process.

“Did they tell you what happened?” Tony asked, as if he was reading his mind. Maybe… Maybe he was. Peter couldn’t be sure, anymore. The man seemed so intune with everything he felt, everything he thought. On the short visits they’d been allowed with each other since he’d first woken up, Tony been able to tell the nurses that Peter was getting a migraine long before even Peter recognized the beginnings of one.

“Not… Not really,” he answered.

There was a knowing smirk on Tony’s face. “They told you the baby-friendly version.”

He cringed at the phrasing, but didn’t dispute it, because despite the embarrassment, it was _ true _ . They’d told him the _ baby-friendly _ version of events, dumbed-down and censored, safe for children’s fragility. Like he hadn’t been in a war. Like he hadn’t nearly seen Tony die right in front of him. Like the past few days of his life were supposed to mean _ nothing _to him.

“Yeah.”

“You wanna hear the adult version?”

He did, and he didn’t. There was still a part of him that wanted to revert back to who he was before Thanos. A part of him that wanted to believe, against all logic, that he could forget, move on, still be the kid that he felt like when this was all over.

He couldn’t be, of course. He knew that. That… That Peter was gone. Dead. He’d died on Titan, and a different Peter had come back.

“Yes,” he forced out, because the truth might not be what he wanted, but it was what he needed.

Tony folded his hands in his lap, eyes clouded with thought. “I woke up about a week before you. Did they tell you that?”

“I think Bruce mentioned it.”

“Mm. It’s… I think one of the reasons everyone is being so vague is that they’re not exactly sure what happened. Not really, at least. And it’s hard for people to admit that they don’t know something, especially to a kid.”

“I’m not a kid,” he said, just on principle, but his heart wasn’t in it.

_ I’m too young for this, _ he thought. _ I’m too young for all of this. I’m too young to not be a child anymore, but what kind of child feels the things I’m feeling? This… This isn’t childhood. I don’t know what this is, but it isn’t that. _

“Of course you aren’t,” Tony offered, but Peter could tell that he didn’t really mean it, either. “We know it had something to do with the Soul Stone.”

“The Soul Stone?”

“The one and only,” Tony said, tapping a finger erratically against his knee. He’d thrown on some scrubs before leaving his room, refusing to be wandering around with a minor and no pants. He kept making jokes about lawsuits. “Apparently, of all the Stones, the Soul Stone is the most sentient. When I Snapped, it reached out to me, and asked me what I wanted. What _ I _wanted, too, not what I knew was good for the universe.” He smiled, a little wry. “And for some reason, She reached out to you, too. Or, at least, that’s what we’re assuming.”

“No, yeah, that’s…” Peter cleared his throat. “That’s right. I remember… I remember it asking me what I wanted.”

“What’d you say?”

Peter thought that Tony would press him when he didn’t answer right away, but he didn’t. He let him sit and stew, the darkness of his request sitting toxic in his chest, building and building until-

“I… I wished that superheroes weren’t real.”

He’d expected a violent reaction. Disgust, maybe. Certainly disappointment. But Tony just nodded, thoughtful. “That’s a good wish.”

He shook his head. “It wasn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I asked her to make me forget you.” He swallowed back tears. “You’d been… You were in that coma, and nobody could tell me if you were going to wake up, or even if you were going to _ survive _ , and it… and it _ hurt _ , so I wished that you weren’t _ real _, because if you weren’t real, then I didn’t have to grieve anymore. So… So in the world that the Stone made for me, you never even existed.”

Something fond and amused passed over Tony’s face. “Ah.”

“I could’ve asked for _ anything _ ,” he shuddered. “I… I could’ve asked for her to wake you up. For Thanos to have never happened. For everyone to be alive and safe. But… But I didn’t ask her for that. I asked her to make me _ forget _.”

“I’m sure your life was better,” was all Tony said.

“It wasn’t. I was…” He shook his head. There weren’t words for it. Why should there be? It was _ wrong _ in some evolution-deep, innate way. Nobody should push their life away like that, build a new one out of _ nothing _. “It was… empty.”

“Yeah,” Tony whispered, “I know what you mean.”

Peter glanced over at him, but Tony was staring forward, watching the horizon like it might open and swallow them both up.

“What did _ you _ask for?” Peter questioned, hushed, a little afraid of the answer.

A wry smile pulled at the side of Tony’s face that he could see. 

“I asked for a normal life.”

He blinked. He… He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, exactly, but it hadn’t been _ that _. It hadn’t been Tony asking for the same thing that he had.

“You did?”

“I did.”

“I,” he swallowed, could feel another headache forming at the base of his skull, “I thought I was being a coward.”

“Maybe you were,” Tony said, easy as ever. “But you’ve been brave your whole life.” He looked over, eyes bleeding an emotion that Peter couldn’t quite place, but it made him feel safe. Accepted. “I think you’ve earned a little bit of being _ not _brave, for a change.”

“But… But you asked for the same thing, and you’re _ always _brave.”

Tony huffed out a laugh, but it didn’t sound like he was happy. It sounded a little tortured, actually. Like he was laughing at a joke that was so horrifying, so twisted, that it was barely even a joke at all.

“Remember the rooftop, after the ferry? When I took away your suit?”

Peter blinked. “Yeah?”

“When that was all over, I told Rhodey about what had happened. About what you said. D’you know what he told me?”

“What?”

“He said, _ be careful with that kid, Tony. He thinks that you’re a god.” _ Tony blew out a breath, like he was steeling himself against something awful. “You scare me, Peter. You _ terrify _me. And it’s because you look at me and you see all of the good, and none of the bad.” Tony reached up and cupped his cheek. The gesture was so unexpected that Peter nearly lurched back, but it wasn’t because it was unwelcome. “I’m a coward a lot of the time, Peter. And you know what? So is everyone else on the planet. At the end of the day, we’re all cowards.”

He sniffed hard, offered Tony a lopsided smile. “That’s… That’s not a great pep talk about humanity, Mister Stark.”

Tony brushed his thumb just above Peter’s cheekbone, under his eye, then pulled his hand away. “Yeah, well, it wasn’t meant to be.”

“Then what was it supposed to be?”

“A pep talk for _ you _.” Tony studied him sharply. “Did it work?”

“I… don’t really know yet.”

“That’s alright.”

He sat silently for a while. His headache was getting worse, crawling up the back of his head, reaching fingers out behind his eyes, but he ignored it. Eventually, he inched a little closer to Tony’s side, seeking out his warmth. The man slid an arm around his shoulders without flinching, gentle but solid.

“How’d you figure out that it wasn’t real?” He asked eventually.

“The Stone’s reality?”

“Yeah.”

“I spent the whole time feeling... feeling like I was missing something. I’d go down to the lab, look around, and it’s just be... it’d just be too empty.”

“Yeah,” Peter whispered, “Yeah. The suit’s... the suit’s gotta leave a big space behind.”

“I wasn’t looking for the suit, Peter.” Their eyes met, and as much as Peter wished he could pull away, Tony held his gaze there, magnetic and firm. “I was looking for _ you _.”

His breath caught in his chest. “I… I wasn’t there?”

“Normal life, Pete. I was never Iron Man, so I never had a reason to scoop you out of Queens. I guess you probably existed, but I didn’t know you. I couldn’t even remember your name.” Tony’s fists clenched, like he was working through a wave of pain. “You were just… not there.”

He thought about his own other reality, where Tony was so ever-present and so out of reach. It had felt like functioning around a black hole. He wondered if that was how Tony had felt. If Peter had made as much of a crater in Tony’s existence as Tony had in Peter’s.

“I was gone for five years,” he finally said, mostly because he didn’t know _ what else _ to say.

“But you were still _ here _ , Pete,” Tony said, tapping on his temple. “I… I had photos of you, videos, _ memories _ . I thought about you all the time. But then I was in this reality, and there was all this empty space in my head. I needed to be worrying about you, thinking about you, _ grieving _for you, but I didn’t even know you. There was nothing to fill up that space.”

Peter twisted his hands together. He felt tentative, like he was setting the barest bit of his weight on an icy lake. “You thought about me while I was gone?”

“Jesus, Peter, of course I did.”

“Oh.” He paused. Stepped right out onto the ice. Trusted that Tony would catch him if it gave way underneath his feet. “I… That’s how I figured out that mine wasn’t real, too. Because I kept missing you, but I couldn’t remember _ why _ . I couldn’t even figure out who it was that I was missing, but I knew that I was missing _ someone _.” He shrugged, self-conscious. “I… I just really missed you.”

“I missed you too, kid,” Tony murmured, voice rough, tight. “You’ll… You’ll never know how much I missed you.”

Their eyes met again, and Peter’s heart stuttered in his chest, warm and bright with realization. 

He’d wanted Tony to look at him like he was new, like he’d never seen anything like him before, but he wasn’t doing that, now. He was looking at him like he’d seen him a thousand times. Like Peter was his _ favorite _thing to see. And he wasn’t looking at him like he was precious, because precious things were fragile. Precious things got set away on shelves, locked behind the glass in china cabinets.

Tony was looking at him like he was never going to let him go. He was looking at him like he was _ home _.

\--

Years earlier, Tony and Peter sat on top of the Tower, and Tony pointed to the sky, and he whispered, _ look up there, Pete, look as far as you can see and decide to reach farther. _

But now, Tony and Peter sat on top of a hospital, somewhere in the middle of New York City, the Tower spiraling up in the distance, and Peter decided to stay exactly where he was. 

At least for a little while, he was happy to be a home.


End file.
